


rise to meet your future self

by Meatball42



Series: Rare Pairs [174]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Bechdel Test Pass, Character Growth, Coming Out, F/F, Femslash, Happy Ending, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Learning to believe in yourself, Microaggressions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27442873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: Gwen is in love with the right person at the wrong time. But time always moves forward.
Relationships: Freya/Gwen (Merlin), Gwen/Morgana (Merlin)
Series: Rare Pairs [174]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/365729
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	rise to meet your future self

**Author's Note:**

  * For [outlaw_baby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/outlaw_baby/gifts).



When Gwen was in elementary school, there was a girl in her class who was smart, and pretty, and let Gwen sit next to her and her friends at lunch. Gwen’s family had just moved to town, so she didn’t have any other friends, and getting off the bus at Gabby’s house with the other girls and spending the afternoon playing card games and learning to make friendship bracelets was her only social opportunity. She hadn’t exactly been popular at her old school, either, and she mainly stayed quiet and let the others talk, so that she wouldn’t say something silly and lose the friends she had.

But Gwen lived on the other side of town from Gabby, and when it was time for sixth grade, they went to different middle schools. With the benefit of hindsight, Gwen knows that Gabby was her first crush, and that she’s gay. But at the time, neither Gwen nor her parents understood why she cried for so long about Gabby when some of their other friends were still going to be in her class. 

Gwen is fourteen now, and she’s going to the private high school an hour away from home. She’ll be living on campus during the week and going home at the weekends, and it’s all paid for with a merit scholarship. Gwen is nervous to be away from home, to be at such a fancy school, to be surrounded by people she doesn’t know yet again. But she’s also excited.

She hears her roommate coming before she sees her. Her voice is striking, ringing clear through the hallways. 

“I can carry that myself, father,” the girl is announcing crossly.

“Nonsense,” a man replies. He enters the dorm room first, carrying a large trunk, while Gwen hurries to stand up from her bed and smooth out her dress.

The man’s gaze falls on Gwen as he sets down the trunk just inside the door, and he smiles, his eyes lighting up. “There, Morgana, introduce yourself. I’ll take care of the rest of your luggage.”

He winks at Gwen and leaves the room.

The girl who comes in is taller than Gwen, pale, with black hair and a plump chin. She looks around the room and at Gwen and her things like she’s evaluating it all. After a moment, she smiles.

“You must be Gwen. I’m Morgana.”

She offers her hand and Gwen shakes it, feeling light-headed and bubbly. “H-hello.”

Morgana peers at her a little, and her smile widens, and she nods as though agreeing with something in her own head.

Gwen is entranced.

The feeling doesn’t go away through orientation, through the first week of classes, through hearing Morgana shout at her father over the phone, through being woken up by Morgana’s alarm going off far too early so Morgana can get up to do her hair and make-up. They spend a lot of time together, going to breakfast and dinner together and doing homework in their room at night.

Gwen’s crush grows bigger as she gets to know Morgana better. They don’t have a lot in common in terms of backgrounds or interests, but she likes the way Morgana talks about things, the way she sees things. It comes out in Gwen’s poetry, the things she writes sitting by the river and never shows to anyone.

Gwen watches Morgana often, and says very little. Morgana talks to her as though she’s worth talking to, even though she doesn’t reply much, and it makes Gwen feel important.

“You know Leon, who lives in Founder’s Hall,” Morgana says one evening as they’re puttering around the room before lights out. “He asked me to the Fall Formal. He’s nice enough, I think I’ll say yes, don’t you think?”

Gwen fiddles with her phone until Morgana says her name. “Oh? Yes, he’s… nice.”

“He is,” Morgana says thoughtfully. “I’m not sure, though. Maybe we could go?”

Gwen’s heart jumps into her throat and she looks up from her phone so fast she must look like a deer in headlights. “Us?” she says, her voice going shrill.

Morgana smiles. “Well of course you’re going, aren’t you? I think, maybe as a freshman I shouldn’t go with a date. I’m sure my father would complain, and he complains enough as it is. But he likes you, and I’m sure we’d have fun together.”

“Oh… sure.”

“You are going, aren’t you?” Morgana frowns at her. “Do you not have a dress? We could go shopping.”

Gwen swallows her disappointment. “I’d love to.”

Shopping together is fun. Gwen’s older brother drives them to the mall and disappears with his friends for a few hours while she and Morgana bounce around stores. They try on dresses in a few different places, and pick out dresses that compliment each other. Morgana holds Gwen’s hand as they walk through the mall and Gwen feels like she must be glowing.

At the Fall Formal, they hang out with some people they both know. They dance together during some of the upbeat songs, and get cookies and spy on their classmates. And then Leon comes and asks Morgana to dance during a slow dance. 

Gwen doesn’t see her for the rest of the night.

It hurts way more than it should. Gwen knows they weren’t there as dates, but she thinks she deserves better than being abandoned and then woken up at midnight when Morgana comes back to the room. She doesn’t mention it to Morgana, but she starts spending more time at the library, focusing on her work, just while her bruised heart heals. 

In the last month of the semester, Morgana has two of her classmates over to work on their final project. Gwen is doing some reading on her bed, but the girls seem to be in a disagreement, so it’s rather hard to concentrate. Then Morgana calls her name across the room. 

“Gwen! We’re trying to choose a fourth hero for the American Woman presentation, do you want to help?”

Gwen isn’t getting much done with how loud they’re being anyway, so she sits next to Morgana and looks over the group's notes while Morgana explains the project.

“We have to represent four aspects of American culture with four women who made a difference in their field. We have Susan B. Anthony for civil rights, Sally Ride for science, and Marylin Monroe for pop culture. So we’re looking for someone in sports, art, or something else.”

“I want to do Taylor Swift,” one of the other girls insists. She’s wearing a PINK sweater. “Music is different than movies.”

“Not really,” Morgana says. “Not enough to count.”

“You’ve got literature on here.” Gwen points to the rubric. “You could do Toni Morrison?”

“Who?” the girl in the PINK sweater asks.

“She’s a novelist? She won a Nobel Prize.”

The girl shrugs. “Haven’t heard of her. I don’t want to do literature anyway, what if you’re supposed to read something they wrote?”

Morgana rolls her eyes. “What about sports?”

“Oh! Serena Williams!” Gwen says excitedly. “She just won all four Grand Slams in one year.”

“What sport is that?” the PINK girl asks.

“It’s tennis,” says the other classmate, who’s been thinking quietly. “How about Billie Jean King? That way we get LGBT inclusion as well!”

“Diversity points, I’m in,” says the PINK girl. “As long as I don’t have to do the research.”

“Sounds great,” Morgana says quickly, interrupting the third girl, who’s scowling at the PINK girl. “Jess, why don’t you just do Marylin Monroe, see if you can find a video clip or something.”

“I still want to do Taylor Swift, she’s a feminist! Ms. Thompson will love that!”

“Whatever,” says the other girl. “But it has to be longer, since you’re only doing one person.”

Gwen goes back to her bed while the girls are arguing over how long each segment of the project should be. She’s feeling unhappy and disappointed, even though she has no stake in the project at all, and she wants to get back to her reading and not think about it.

Morgana catches her as she’s leaving the room.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I liked your ideas. It’s just not worth arguing about or else we’d never get done.” She looks over her shoulder at where her classmates are bickering again.

Gwen has a stomachache, and she doesn’t want to talk about it. “I’m not mad. It’s just loud. I think I’ll go to the library.”

“Okay. I’ll see you later.”

She smiles at Gwen and her dimples come out, but for the first time it doesn’t give Gwen that swooping feeling in her stomach. 

  
  
  


Winter break gives Gwen time to think about what she wants to do. The distance from seeing Morgana every day helps her realize that she’s let her crush take over too much of her life. She decides that when school starts again, she’s not going to let Morgana be the only thing she cares about.

When the Spring semester begins, Gwen joins the history club and the debate club to make sure that she doesn’t succumb to just staying in her and Morgana’s room and living for Morgana’s every one-sided conversation. She redoubles her focus on her studies.

It helps. She makes new friends and spends time with them, and when she does spend time with Morgana she has more to say, so it isn’t all so one-sided.

Then spring sports start up. Morgana joins the lacrosse team and is immediately sucked into a clique of older, athletic girls, and Gwen rarely sees her anymore. She goes back to spending her evenings in the library, because it feels too lonely in their room anymore.

Gwen’s hard work pays off: she gets all As for the semester, and ranks high on a national math exam one of her teachers suggested she take. It’s mentioned in the school newspaper, and her father clips the article carefully and presses it into the memories book Gwen’s mother started for her when she was an infant.

Morgana also gets great grades. She wins an award in the lacrosse conference as an athlete-scholar. It’s mentioned in the front-page article about the lacrosse team coming second in the conference, and there’s a little black-and-white picture of Morgana underneath the picture of the team with their trophy.

Gwen may or may not make a clipping of that picture, and keep it in the drawer by her bed.

Morgana’s father comes to campus after the award and takes Morgana and some of her teammates out for dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town. Before he leaves, he thanks Gwen for being such a good friend to Morgana this year. Gwen doesn’t know what to say at all.

Morgana hugs Gwen tight before they part ways for the summer. Gwen breathes in the scent of her perfume and tells herself that she’s being silly, but she still feels Morgana’s warmth along her front for the rest of the day.

  
  


The very first day back at school in the fall, Morgana tells Gwen she has a boyfriend. She spends a while describing how he looks and what he likes and how nice he is, and Gwen doesn’t know what to say to get it to stop.

The next week she goes to a meeting of the Gay-Straight Alliance. She hadn’t wanted to attend previously, unsure of what Morgana would say, unsure of what she’d say to her father or brother if they somehow found out. But she’s angry at Morgana, for unknowingly picking this boy back home over her, even though she’d never said anything to let Morgana know how she felt.

The club is nice. Gwen doesn’t talk much, but there are older students who are out and say nice things about acceptance and supporting each other, and interesting things about the club’s history and initiatives on campus. It’s a good mix between fun and friendly and political enough not to feel like just a social club. Gwen decides she’ll come back.

Between the GSA, debate club, and the history club, Gwen is out of the room for three evenings a week. Morgana’s lacrosse friends mostly play field hockey as well, so she’s either practicing or hanging out with them a lot. Gwen tells herself that she doesn’t miss spending time with Morgana, that she doesn’t still like her like that. It’s a little hopeless when she still wakes up sometimes and watches Morgana’s sleeping face across the room.

  
  
  


Gwen meets Freya one night at the GSA and she’s struck immediately. Freya is beautiful, but more than that she’s thoughtful and kind and she says things in the club that make Gwen think. She ends up following Freya and some of her friends out to ice cream one night after GSA, and she finds herself next to Freya while the girls all talk.

There’s one point in the night where the other girls all decide they’re going to get more ice cream, but Freya waves them off, and suddenly it’s just her and Gwen at the picnic table by the river where students often hang around. Gwen’s heart races, she can feel her palms begin to sweat.

Freya doesn’t look nearly so panicked. She smiles up at the stars that are coming out as the sun goes down, and starts talking easily.

“I love nights like this. Back home I would ride one of our horses all through the afternoon and past sunset. There’s something so peaceful about being out when the night starts.”

Gwen can feel her heart melting. The best part is when Freya looks down from the stars and looks at Gwen with the same adoring smile she was giving to the stars.

“What do you think?”

  
  


Gwen starts hanging out with Freya and Freya’s friends, and they’re all so nice and welcoming that she starts talking more. It helps that Freya is always willing to listen to her speak, to wait while Gwen gets the words out, encouraging her when her shyness gets in the way. It helps that Freya wants to go on walks with Gwen through the woods and hold her hand. It helps that, when Gwen mentions her poetry, Freya wants to read it.

“If you wrote it, I’m sure I’ll love it,” she says simply when Gwen protests that she’s not really any good.

Gwen lets her read it, though she feels vulnerable and tender, watching Freya turn the pages of her writing notebook.

But Freya gives her a hug when she finishes reading the last pages.

“You’re a great writer,” she says. “I love them.”

When Freya kisses her one night as they sit by the river and watch the sunset, Gwen has never felt happier.

  
  
  


They text and FaceTime all through the summer. Gwen feels awash with romance. Her brother and father tease her about the way she smiles at her phone all the time, but nothing can stifle the joy Gwen feels. She’s picked up drawing again as she’s inspired again and again. She writes new poems that are happy and hopeful, rather than the someone melancholy poems from the last year.

When school is approaching, she can’t wait to go back. She’s packed days early and has been texting with Freya about all the things they’re going to do together when they’re back on campus.

And then the day comes. Gwen has convinced her dad to drive her in early, and she gets her room set up and then rushes across campus to Freya’s dorm.

When she reaches Freya’s room and sees her again, she shouts in happiness. They’re hugging, and then Gwen kisses Freya, and.

And, it’s different than before.

They spend the rest of the day together, meeting up with their friends as they get back to campus, going for ice cream, just the two of them. They’re holding hands at the picnic table where they first really talked. It isn’t awkward, but it feels different.

“I think, maybe,” Freya says, uncertainly. She’s watching their hands, woven together on top of the table. “Maybe we should just be friends. It feels a little… like, I care about you, and I want to talk to you and hang out. But.”

Gwen squeezes Freya’s hand. “I still want to be friends, too. You’re right.” She laughs a little in relief. “I’m glad you still want to be friends with me.”

Freya gets up and runs around the table to hug Gwen. “Of course. That isn’t going to change.”

Freya walks Gwen back to her dorm and hugs her again outside the main door. She kisses Gwen on the cheek, sweet, and Gwen does the same before going inside.

Morgana is waiting when she gets to the room, sitting on her bed. She looks up at Gwen when Gwen walks in, and Gwen stops in the doorway.

“Are you… dating that girl?” Morgana says uncertainly. “I saw from the window. I was waiting for you to get back.”

Gwen can’t say anything for a long moment. She’s always been afraid of people finding out that she’s gay, although her father and brother took it well. She doesn’t know how Morgana would react, and she doesn’t want to deal with a roommate who’s homophobic. But maybe more than that, she can’t stand the idea of _Morgana_ looking at her like there’s something wrong with her.

Her heart is in her throat when she answers. “We’re not… anymore. But we were.”

Morgana is quiet for a while. Gwen goes and puts her jacket and things down on her bed and starts unpacking one of the boxes she’d left behind to run and see Freya.

“I’m sorry you two broke up,” Morgana says eventually. When Gwen turns to face her, there’s no sign of the disgust or disapproval she’d feared. Just the big-eyed, soulful expression of Morgana’s sincerity.

It soothes something deep inside her and she relaxes. “We’re still friends. Just not girlfriends anymore.”

Morgana gets up, and she comes over to Gwen’s side of the room and hugs her. It feels, oh, it feels the way Freya’s hug didn’t, earlier, the way Gwen had expected it to. Morgana’s touch makes her stomach swoop, makes her skin feel tingly and alive.

Her hair tickles Gwen’s cheek as she whispers, “I missed you.”

Gwen hugs her tightly. “I missed you, too.”

  
  
  


Sophomore year is a little tougher than freshman year. Gwen has to focus a bit more on her classes, but that’s okay, because she gets to do her homework with Morgana. Morgana is spending more time in their room than last semester, doing her homework and chatting with Gwen. Sometimes when they’re doing the same classwork, they’ll sit on the same bed, books spread out beside each other. Sometimes, one of them will lean into the other’s side and work just like that.

Gwen’s crush comes back with a vengeance. Now that she knows what it’s like to have Morgana doze off on her shoulder, what Morgana looks like on Gwen’s lavender sheets, her dreams feel brighter than before. But she can’t imagine that Morgana feels the same way.

Things with Freya are still good. They sit next to each other at GSA and go to the dining hall for lunch together sometimes. When Gwen has her first solo debate with the debate club, Freya is there in the audience cheering for her. Morgana is too, along with some of her friends from field hockey. Considering that the school’s debate aren’t the most well-attended event on campus, Gwen has the largest cheering section out of anyone. It feels incredible when she wins, and she’s in the middle of a circle of people all clapping for her and hugging her and congratulating her.

Freya kisses her on the cheek and it makes Gwen blush. She’s so happy that Freya is still supporting her even though they broke up. She’s happy that she didn’t have to lose the easy familiarity, the closeness, just because things changed between them.

She’s so happy that she doesn’t see the looks that go between some of the other girls.

  
  


It’s a week after the debate when Morgana comes to their room in the afternoon, while Gwen is enjoying a free period listening to music and scrolling through Instagram. Morgana is even paler than usual, with two spots of red high on her cheeks. She throws her bag onto her bed and stands there shaking. Gwen gets up immediately.

“Are you okay?”

Morgana clenches her fists, staring at the window that’s open to let in the fall breeze. Her lips are trembling, but when she speaks it’s full of rage.

“I quit lacrosse.”

“What?” Gwen gasps. “But you love it!”

Morgana tears open her backpack and starts pulling her books and binders out, ignoring a tearing page and a few pens falling to the floor.

“No, I liked my friends. But I don’t want to be there anymore.” She spins around and Gwen almost takes a step backwards, such is the fury bright in her eyes.

“Are you and Freya dating again?”

“I- um, no?”

There’s a long, tense moment. Morgana is breathing hard, on the edge of something. And then she sits down on her bed and visibly calms herself down.

“I’m sorry for shouting.”

Gwen comes to sit next to her. “What’s wrong?”

“They were saying things about you,” Morgana admits quietly. “You and Freya. And especially you. And I.” She shakes her head, looking confused. “I don’t understand. You were so good at the debate. So smart and you argued so well, I- I’ve never. It was amazing. And they acted like it was nothing. Like you were nothing.”

Gwen swallows. She’s always hated being criticized and mocked, and she’s had far too much of it. But she remembers the sincere praise of her friends in debate club, the way Freya complimented her, the way Morgana said ‘It was amazing,’ breathily, like she meant it.

When she says, “I don’t care what they think,” it’s true.

Morgana turns to Gwen and takes her hand. Gwen lets it happen, lets herself feel Morgana’s soft skin against hers, holding onto her.

“I’m not going to associate with people like that. So I shouted at them and told them I was quitting lacrosse and I wasn’t going to be their friend anymore. I can find something better to put on my college applications,” she says with a sniff, and Gwen can’t help it: she bursts out laughing.

After a moment Morgana starts to laugh with her. They fall together, lying on the bed, and when the laughter peeters out, Gwen finds that it doesn’t take that much courage, actually, to hug Morgana.

“Thanks for standing up for me,” she whispers.

Morgana smiles at her, just a few inches away, and hugs her tighter.

They lay like that until Gwen has to leave for class. 

  
  
  


The next week, they’re on Gwen’s bed doing biology, laying close together. They’ve spent so much more time pressed together this week, one of their arms nearly always around the other’s waist. Gwen feels like they’re on the verge of something, but at the same time, she doesn’t feel nervous about it. She knows how she feels about Morgana, and how Morgana feels about her. She doesn’t have to be afraid.

So when the moment happens that they both turn to each other at the same time, and their eyes meet, and they lean in at the same time for their first kiss.

Gwen is ready.


End file.
